


Ravenous

by kangeiko



Category: The Laundry Files - Charles Stross
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, The Fuller Memorandum, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: After the graveyard, Bob wakes up hungry. Angleton tries to help.





	Ravenous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Philomytha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/gifts).



> This is set during the epilogue of The Fuller Memorandum, and uses canon-typical violence and imagery. I have referenced some lines from the epilogue directly, and paraphrased a few others (mostly in the final few paragraphs). 
> 
> Many thanks to Holland for the invaluable beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own fault.

I edited this out from my official record. It's of no help to anyone other than me, and my recent experience with Iris has hammered home the need to maintain a discrete silence on some topics. And although Angleton is generally phlegmatic, I'm not entirely certain that he'd want me opening my mouth on this for a record not directly controlled by him. 

As far as the official record is concerned, then, I don't remember a whole lot in between being found by Barnes’s rescue team and resurfacing to sanity a few weeks later in the Village. Mo has already updated me pretty thoroughly on the parts I’d missed, and doubtless once I am fully back on my feet Angleton will debrief me on anything Mo is not privy to. 

In reality, the memory loss is a lot lighter than my peace of mind would have preferred. I think I would have slept a lot more easily if I could have gone from the graveyard straight to my own bed and not remember any of the parts in between. The problem is, although I can fudge and elide the inconvenient parts of what happened, that doesn’t mean that I don’t remember them. 

So, I do need to write down somewhere the unredacted version of events, even if I destroy it immediately afterwards. I need to make sense of it myself, and what it means. Most importantly, I need to figure out how I can prepare myself for what’s coming. Because something tells me that when the time comes, I won’t have a whole lot of choice.

*

Angleton - to the surprise of no one - recovered much faster than I did. He only had to put himself back into his original form, drawing back in whatever portion of him the summoning had unsettled. After a couple of nights of observation, the hospital had wisely decided that he could be released on his own recognizance, and discharged him.

Things were a little more complicated with me. Between the cultists and my own death-magic, I’d managed to punch some pretty impressive holes in my soul and my containment field (currently doing double-duty as my all-too-mortal body). I was leaking like a sieve, and sedated up to the eyeballs. 

Things had apparently been marginally better the first couple of nights, when I was in the same room as Angleton. Whatever bits of him were still floating around inside me seemed perfectly content to gradually seep their way across the room to their original owner like poorly-behaved shadows. I slept better as a result, in any case. In this job, you take your wins where you can get them. 

After Angleton was discharged, however, I started deteriorating rapidly. Mo came to visit me every day, feeding me mush and settling me down when I wouldn’t stop screaming. They had wrapped me up like a mummy - gauze, bandages, and the obligatory open-backed hospital gown - and topped them off with security mittens on my hands and restraints around my wrists. I wouldn’t stop screaming, Mo told me later. I wouldn’t stop screaming, and every time I could get an arm free, I’d tried to eat my fingers.

By the end of the week, I had gone to sleep and then - stayed like that. For three days I was dead to the world, and showed little to no sign of improvement. Mo kept a vigil at my bedside for hours each day until her violin made that a difficulty. (Angleton had apparently told her in no uncertain terms that putting the two of us together when I was in this state was deeply unwise.)

The hospital was growing concerned because I’d been vacillating so wildly in between states, moving from almost-lucidity in the first day or so, through to psychotic mania in the middle few days, and then straight through to the Glasgow coma scale. They had recommended that I be transferred to St Hilda’s for a more detailed assessment, presumably to check whether there was anything left of my brain.

Angleton evidently disagreed with this strongly enough to personally intervene and have me shipped off to the Village instead. He was evidently disturbed enough by my persistent lack of recovery to accompany the ambulance himself, and see me instilled in one of the Dunwich seaside cottages for my convalescence. The resident doctor judged that the antipsychotics were not helping and took me off them immediately, prescribing instead an exciting cocktail of MDMA, methylphenidate and mirtazapine, as well a selection of other drugs not commonly available to Joe Public.

The Village is the polar opposite of a hospital wing in pretty much every respect. There’s no wifi, and access to a (padlocked and lobotomised) computer is by appointment only in a secure, warded room. The patients are housed in self-contained cottages, there is just one doctor, and there are no nurses at all. There are, however, a significant number of guards and attendants, as the majority of the patients who end up at the Village are either suffering from Krantzberg syndrome-related maladies, or even more specialised injuries.

I was deposited in the warded bed of the farthest cottage, my medication was amended, my restraints and mittens removed, and I was left to wake up of my own volition.

When I came to, a day or so later, the first thing I saw was Angleton splayed out in a chair beside my bed. He was reading a slim volume of Auden poetry - not something I had ever especially associated with him - and he looked his usual impeccably-dressed self, if a little thinner than normal. _Almost cadaverous,_ a corner of my mind whispered, and I shivered.

Slowly, trying not to startle him, I flexed my hands on the bedding. They _hurt_ , and I could see teeth marks in amidst the other injuries. Surreptitiously, I looked around the room, trying to gain my bearings. There was a sigil inked over the bedroom lintel which looked to be a simple ward, and a matching one on the windowsill. No guards that I could see, and the bedroom door was ajar.

I looked back at Angleton, who hadn’t looked up from his book. It was dark outside, and growing darker. Angleton would very likely be heading back soon now that I was awake, and it was very likely that I would lose my chance to ask. I tried to force a little moisture in my mouth so I could speak. The nausea helped. “Is it contained? Am - am _I_ contained?”

Those were the first full sentences I’d managed since the graveyard.

Angleton finally glanced up from his book. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his mouth was a thin line. That, perhaps, is what scared me most of all: I’d never seen Angleton tired or injured before. He’d worn the facade of the unflappable public school headmaster so well that I had never managed to catch a glimpse behind that exterior, and now, of course, I knew why: what was beneath his human skin was not something which could look tired. He could just feed until the tiredness went away. 

At that thought, something jumped up to lodge in the back of my throat and I turned away, gagging.

“It’s all in hand, Robert,” Angleton said gently, setting the book aside. He stood up and approached my bedside, helping to prop me upright with a hand on my back and an arm across my chest as I retched into the basin some thoughtful soul had left on the bedside table. “You did well, considering.”

After a few minutes I lay back in the bed, gasping, my eyes streaming. I could still taste copper in the back of my throat, and it wasn’t helping that the faint echo of hunger seemed to linger a lot longer than science was telling me it should. 

Here’s the thing: all that Iris’s bodge job as a summoning - and my own death-magic ‘fuck you all’ incantations - had managed to do was to allow me to tap into the Eater’s powers temporarily. The Eater was absolutely, categorically _not_ bound into my own flesh for any period of time whatsoever. The fact that Angleton was both still upright and had yet to eat me attested to this fact.

Although…

“That was… were you…”

He smiled a little thinly. “Visiting? Yes.”

Visiting. Now _there_ was an euphemism. The thing was, I’d already figured that I couldn’t have controlled all those feeders if I had just been myself back in the graveyard. Oh, I’d been able to call them, and I could have probably channelled them through me into eating Iris and her entire little death cult, but they would have almost certainly eaten me as well. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to exercise the level of control I remembered exerting. The only reasonable explanation was that when I’d been subvocalising my black theorem and discorporated at the same time as Iris had bound me back down, something else had also been in the vicinity and had been brought along for the ride. Angleton - or, more accurately, bits of him - had been pulled into me rather forcefully. It was a bit like accidentally inhaling a fly, if the fly then set up shop in your neocortex, pushed tentacles through your brain stem, and tried to eat everything and everyone around you.

Poor Iris. She’d been so close to having the Eater of Souls bound into a controlled vessel. And poor me, I suppose. Because the end result of her botched summoning had ended up leaving me with the very clear memories of exactly what it felt like to have the Eater crawling around in my brain.

I took a deep breath. “How do you stand it?”

I’d had a tiny amount of Angleton’s power for a fraction of an hour, and it had nearly consumed me and everything around me. I could still hear Iris’s whimpers as she tried to get away, her bound body wriggling as far away from me as she could manage on the narrow altar, desperately trying to avoid skin-to-skin contact. She’d smelled so _good_.

Angleton tilted his head to one side. His gaze was considering. “You are still affected, I presume.”

If by ‘affected’ he meant I’d tried to eat the nurse who checked on me back at the hospital, then yes. Yes, I was fucking affected. Four nights in, I’d managed to force my way back to coherence - to sanity - and the nurse was _right there_ and smelling absolutely delicious. I didn’t have any teeth to do much more than gnaw lightly on her soul, but even that had been enough to make me run to unconsciousness as fast as my panic could carry me. They hadn’t been able to wake up since then party because of the cocktail of drugs they had been pushing through my system, and partly because I was in so much agony from the cravings when awake that unconsciousness was a welcome respite.

The one positive sign was that I hadn’t tried to eat Mo the few times I’d been lucid when she had been visiting. I wasn’t sure whether the reason for this was Mo herself, or her violin; the cursed thing was almost definitely a factor in why subconscious saw her as a threat than as a snack, but it wouldn’t have made my instinctive response to bite down any different. Maybe by that point, the possession had waned enough for me to recognise my limits, even if they only extended to cursed objects. I was fairly certain that the thing in the violin case wouldn’t take it too kindly if I gnawed on her, even with blunt teeth. Not when it could bite back much more effectively.

It’s fucking strange to feel gratitude to something that monstrous; to know that its malevolence was coming in handy.

“I nearly ate one of the nurses,” I muttered, not meeting his eyes. My fingers hurt and I clenched my fists, feeling the fragile scar tissue stretch and tear from the pressure.

Angleton snorted. “Inadvisable.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his long legs. He might as well have been commenting on my planned route home for all the emotion present in his voice. _I wouldn’t take the M4, there’s rather a lot of traffic. And if you insist on eating nurses, you won’t be leaving here anytime soon._

I scowled. “Yes, that much I had gathered on my own.” I hesitated for a moment. “Um. Can I -”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

The ceiling was a fascinating pale grey colour. I fixed my eyes on one of the creeping cracks in the corner and considered how to phrase my question. “When does it go away?” I asked finally, poorly phrased and in a rush. (Of course. _Of course._ ) “Not the power, obviously. I mean. That went away fairly quickly; I’m not sure I would have been able to eat that much of her even if I’d managed to bite down. But the hunger hasn’t really faded.”

There was a short silence. I sneaked a look back at Angleton, who seemed to be inspecting his fingernails. “... no,” I said. Squawked.

He shrugged a little. “You will get used to it eventually. You will learn to -” he hesitated. “Manage it.”

That didn’t sound all that promising. Angleton had ‘managed’ firstly through the geas, and later through the iron will of a repressed Englishman. I had nowhere near as much experience as him in tamping down something like that. “And the next time I tap into a burst of power?”

He smiled his razor-sharp smile. “Stay away from any nurses.” He dusted imaginary lint off his labels and stood up, tucking his book away in a pocket of his coat. “Well. Do try to recover quickly, Robert. There are precious few suitable replacements to cover for you during your convalescence.”

_But -_

“I’m hungry!” I burst out, more to myself than to him. It sounded like the whine of a petulant child. Angleton froze with his back to me, halfway to the door. I flushed, mortified. “I - I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I thought.”

Tired. And, yes, so, _so_ hungry. Something in me just wanted to latch on to the nearest being - human or otherwise - and _gnaw_ until some of the ache in my belly went away. I bit down on the giggle that threatened to emerge of the mental picture of me with a demonic teething ring, trying to master my cravings. 

Maybe the Laundry had the equivalent of Nicorette patches for the soul. 

Maybe if I didn’t get this under control before they discharged me, I’d try to gnaw on Mo in my sleep. Or, worse; maybe it wouldn’t be just gnawing. Who knew how much power I’d be able to tap into if I was _really_ hungry?

(This, for the record, is why I hated Mo’s fucking violin.)

“It really does get easier, Robert,” Angleton said. He sounded odd. He still had his back to me, his spine ramrod straight. “I could, ah, accelerate things a little, if you need me to, but -”

I didn’t hesitate. “Please,” I said. I was hungry. I was _starving_. “If you can - _please_.”

My hands were still raw from where I’d been chewing on my fingers, and my arm was bandaged from where that bitch Jonquil had carved out chunks of flesh. All I could think about was how hungry I felt, and how, if I could just have one good meal, some of the pain would go away.

At this point, I was willing to take anything Angleton was willing to offer me.

Angleton nodded sharply. “Very well.” When he turned around, his hands loosening the knot of his tie, his eyes were glowing. “Come here, boy.”

I went. My legs almost gave out halfway when I stood up from the bed and he had to catch me, his hands cold and hard on my shoulders. “Sorry,” I muttered, fighting dizziness. 

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Angleton said, “it is to be expected.” He settled me down so I was sitting on the bed facing him and stood in front of me for a long moment.

I found the urge to squirm. “What should I…?” 

After a moment, Angleton shrugged off his coat, then finished with his tie. He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a plain white undershirt, and sat down opposite me, as self-possessed and laconic as ever. He smiled a little at my open-mouthed expression. “It will be easier like this,” he said. He paused for a moment. “Your brain will be trying to translate your previous experiences for you. It’s why you ended up damaging your hands.” He nodded at my scarred fingers. “I’m assuming you didn’t physically bite the nurse?”

I looked away. “No. Not physically.” Not that the form of the attack had made it any easier for her. Human souls don’t respond well to having even a low-power necromancer gnawing on them.

He nodded. “Then that would be why.” He finished removing his dress shirt, and left it folded carefully on one side. “So, then.” His lips quirked up on one side. “Don’t worry, Robert. You can’t hurt me.” He smelled so _good._

Things got a little fuzzy after that. 

I don’t remember reaching out for Angleton; whether I grabbed him, or whether he caught me and pulled me to him. I do remember that I managed to draw blood almost immediately, biting clean through his lower lip the moment I was in reach and lapping urgently at the wound as if I could prise it open and worm my way inside his skin. If he had been human it might even have been possible, considering how much I’d swiss-cheesed my brain with the death-magic incantations. I might have been able to draw down enough power to leave a little part of him permanently inside me, allowing me eat my fill.

As it was, Angleton tipped my head so that I was positioned over his shoulder and simply held me in place, letting me gnaw at him - at his skin, at his body, at whatever it was that passed for his soul - until both my magical and physical teeth felt blunted and raw. I know that I managed to bite through his skin in at least one place because my mouth was full of copper and salt. Some monstrous, ravenous part of me ate and ate and ate, and yet I still couldn’t quieten down the need coiled deep in my belly. “Please,” I said to him, pained and bewildered, panting into his neck. I was trying to bite down with a part of my mind that was no longer there and it ached, it _ached_. “Please, I need, I need -”

He indulged me, I think. I was starting to think that he had been rather indulgent with me all the way through our professional relationship, despite the late nights and early call-ins. Given everything that had happened, it was hard to credit it to anything other than Angleton pulling my arse out of the fire on repeated occasions, sometimes literally.

“Just like that,” he said quietly. A strange expression crossed over his face as he looked down at where I was cushioned against his shoulder. His hands settled lightly in my hair, stroking over the back of my skull. “You can’t hurt me boy, it’s alright. It’s alright, now.” 

Maybe I couldn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t grateful to him for letting me _try_. I pursed my lips over his bare skin and suckled, strong and wet, like pulling blood from a vein. Whatever I’d eaten of Alexei, the Laughing Boy, had been enough to paste over the gaping hole the cultists had gouged in my soul with their sacrifice, but it had not filled it; not quite. And with this much raw power so close by, it was little wonder that some stupid, suicidal part of my mind was scrabbling against the edges of the containment field of the Eater of Souls, trying to find purchase. Above me, Angleton’s eyes glowed green, his mouth slack as he visibly fought the instinct to follow my mouth all the way down, to push his way into my vulnerable soul and feed. 

I remember the sound he made as he reached down and cupped my cheek, his other arm around my shoulders to keep me steady. “That’s it,” he said, and he’d sounded so fucking _gentle_ , green eyes and all. “That’s it, take what you need. It’s for you, you can have this, you can have your fill.” 

I am not even sure I could have stopped, the need to consume him was overwhelming. That realisation - even now, weeks afterwards - is a terrifying thought. What if I had tried this with someone else? 

(What if I had tried this with Mo?)

In my desperation, I tore at Angleton’s defences with my mind and with my body, trying to find ways to pry him open and reach whatever part of him I could. My mouth was on fire, red-raw with greed and appetite. It was… it was so _good_. Horrifying beyond words and I would probably never sleep again as a result, but it was _good_.

Angleton clearly had more presence of mind that I did in those moments. He simply let me exhaust myself against him, biting and sucking on his skin rather than letting me reach what it housed, despite my frantic scrabbling at his mental defenses. By the end - it felt like hours later, but it must have only been a few minutes - I could barely keep my eyes open, weakly slumping against him. Angleton’s arms tightened around me almost painfully for a moment before he eased me back on the bed, supporting my head as he would an injured child. 

I blinked up at him tiredly from my prone position, my mouth tingling unpleasantly. I could see the deep bruise and teeth marks I’d left on his neck and shoulder. 

I don’t think I’d really understood until that point just how much self-control he had. In my attempt to claw my way through to him, using blood and flesh as entry points, I’d left myself exposed through the same routes. He wouldn’t have had to do much to take me; hell, no one would have been the wiser. Poor old Bob Howard simply didn’t recover from his run-in with the cultists, and who could think twice on that? Not when I still had a heavy swathe of bandages around my arm and a missing chunk of flesh and muscle.

And not when I’d wedged my mind and body open and invited in all manner of hungry feeders for a feast.

No, he wouldn’t have had to do much work at all to eat. Not when I was practically forcing myself down his (metaphorical) gullet as the self-serving main course.

“There, now,” he murmured, the luminous glow of his eyes fading slowly back to something convincingly human. “You’ll be alright.” He sounded almost fond.

His wounds had already stopped bleeding in that short period of time as I stared up at him, dazes and bewildered. By the time he was back in London, I wagered that there wouldn’t be any marks left on him.

My wounds, on the other hand...

He helped me clean up afterwards, wiping away all bodily fluids and carefully diluting them with water and surgical spirit. It was safe in the Village, but Angleton’s own blood was mixed with mine at this point, and I’m guessing that he wasn’t too keen on leaving anything behind which could be used against him. You could never be too careful, as Iris had demonstrated.

“It does get easier, Robert,” he said quietly, looking at me with a faint curl of his lip. “You will learn to manage it. You will forget.” He hesitated, then reached down and smoothed my hair away from my forehead with a cool hand. It seemed as if he was thinking about doing something else, those familiar grey eyes unreadable, but he turned away at the last second instead and reached for his abandoned shirt and tie, dressing quickly and efficiently. 

With a last glance back at me Angleton tipped his head in goodbye and left, his coat thrown over one arm. I watched him go in silence.

It was probably for the best. Complications in our line of work can kill you, and having experienced destiny entanglement once already, I could see the tell-tale threads of it around the two of us. Whatever is coming, it needs us both as separate, free agents. Playing this any other way is unwise and would just leave one or both of us exposed. 

(It’s difficult enough with Mo, with both of us knowing what is coming, how things will end.)

I used to think Angleton scared the shit out of me, but now I know better. I know what he’s like, from the inside. I know the feel of his hands on me, and how gently he held me as I tried to quieten down the gnawing need in my belly.

He left me curled up on the bed in satiated lassitude, staring up at the ceiling and blinking away tears. The hunger was gone, for the moment, although I have no doubt that it would return; it had dug a little too deeply in me for it to be otherwise. 

Like I said: the only god I believe in is coming back. I know it, and Angleton knows it. He is making his own plans for what he will do to survive when reality starts to bleed and the One True God comes back to consume us all. 

I’ll be waiting for my god when he arrives, standing between him and Angleton with a shotgun. Not because I think Angleton needs protecting (or that I’d be the one to make a difference). But because if Angleton dies before me, I now know exactly what I’m going to be hosting beneath my sternum, down in my brain stem and behind my eyes, all the way through until the stars burn down. 

And unless something happens before then to improve my control, I’m going to wake up _hungry_.

*

fin


End file.
